The Insomnia Thread

[jebreject]

yeah dude the racial tension in st. louis was fucking palpable

[diesel_powered]

Oh man, DP. Good thing the doors are locked at night. But I have no idea why you would want to go back to such a shithole..


I should have chosen another state to go to school in :/

We went to a couple of the new developments around there that are meant to look like urban areas (or at least what developers think suburban home buyers think urban areas are like), complete with alleys and everything. "Weird" cannot begin to describe it.

[sassymcassface]

i got 4 hours of sleep last night.
it's looking like i will get a maximum of 6 tonight, if i am lucky and fall asleep very soon.

i hate my medicine

[C of heartbreak]

I have insomnia something hardcore. I must have slept like 2 hours tonight. I think I drank too much beer and ate too much fat.

[MollySophia]

Yaaay I've almost been up for 24 hours!

[Ignatius]

I know that the point has been made, and we're back to chattin' bout sleep, but I don't know that I'll ever find a better place to say this, out-of-context though it may be:  Screw you guys, Missouri is pretty cool.  (At least along 70).

Now this:

3) st. louis and the surrounding counties are very segregated. it's not a legal thing, but it is a de facto thing, and it seems to lead to a lot of weird tension between the races. pretty much every missouri native that i met was racist, at least on a passive/unconscious level. out there, if you're not burning a cross or whatever, you can apparently consider yourself non-racist. meanwhile, you can apparently also make statements along the lines of "see, there's black people, and then there's n***ers" and feel like you're not being racist in saying such things.

4) people out there seem to find the idea of someone being liberal as completely foreign. i got strange looks every time i even mentioned barack obama in conversation, from people not involved in the conversation at all. even the punks i met were conservative--one of rob's good friends was at the wedding rehearsal in an against me t-shirt, so i figured we might have some stuff in common, but through conversation i almost immediately discovered that he was one of those pro-life born-again holy-roller pop-punkers, and that he was planning on voting for john mccain. this despite the fact that the clash and against me are his favorite bands.

Yes, St. Louis has racial divisions, like many other large cities.  But you're going a bit far in that you make it seem like St. Louis is much worse off than other large cities.  There are suburbs that are overwhelmingly white, and very close to the city itself in a way that's maybe unusual among large cities.  That's the only way I can imagine that you've gotten this impression.  St. Louis is not a post-racial paradise, but to claim that it's a great deal more segregated than any other midwestern American city is stupid.

St. Louis City solidly votes Democrat.  So does St. Louis County, and so does St. Charles County.  So does Columbia, and so does Kansas City and many of its surrounding suburbs.  These are the places where most people in Missouri live.  In the '06 Senate elections, you could argue that Missouri, despite its racist, fundamentalist Christian culture, won the Senate majority for the Democrats.  I don't know what the deal with your Against Me buddy was, but it's too bad for him.

I'm just curious about where you got the authority to make such broad and strong statements about Missouri? 

[MollySophia]

Hey by the way I Against Me is playing a free show in Power and Light tomorrow. Nobody lives in MO any...MO'


You see what I did there?

[Ignatius]

I did!

[MollySophia]

I like you. Lets be friends!

[YojimboMonkey]

I'm just curious about where you got the authority to make such broad and strong statements about Missouri? 

I lived in Quincy, IL for over 20 years, right across the Mississippi River from Missouri, and my family owns 240 acres of farmland in Northeastern Missouri, just outside Durham.  Does that qualify me to say Missouri sucks?

Also hey guys, from now on we'll be checking your credentials for every post you make.  Be warned.

[C of heartbreak]

When I was younger I had an internets friend who lived in Missouri. We were discussing politics and she said she was "pretty liberal." What I asked what made her liberal, she said "well I think abortion should be legal, some of the time."

[Greg Nog]

Also hey guys, from now on we'll be checking your credentials for every post you make.  Be warned.

I have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which qualifies me for extended fantasies about an interstellar socialist utopia.

[diesel_powered]

Also hey guys, from now on we'll be checking your credentials for every post you make.  Be warned.

I believe I've been given diplomatic immunity by the state of Tacobongo.

[slow west vultures]

3) st. louis and the surrounding counties are very segregated. it's not a legal thing, but it is a de facto thing, and it seems to lead to a lot of weird tension between the races. pretty much every missouri native that i met was racist, at least on a passive/unconscious level. out there, if you're not burning a cross or whatever, you can apparently consider yourself non-racist. meanwhile, you can apparently also make statements along the lines of "see, there's black people, and then there's n***ers" and feel like you're not being racist in saying such things.

actually it could be considered a 'legal' thing.  some of it may date back to the practice of 'redlining' home loans in the early age of suburbanization.  read chapter 11 "Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream" of Kenneth Jackson's Crabgrass Frontier - The Suburbanization of the United States where he uses St. Louis as an example to demonstrate how the Federal Government and mortgage companies put this policy into practice.  particularly page 199 where he's got a map which shows all the different neighborhoods around the mississippi divided between A - first grade (i.e. upwardly mobile white people) B, C, and D (i.e. people that white people wanted to stay segregated from) 

[sassymcassface]

the horrible insomnia i have had lately led to me passing out on my couch the other night, sitting up and with my glasses on, while my neighbors played their usual insanely loud [insert day here] night wrestling.

it was ridiculous.

[jebreject]

Overall most segregated cities (for Blacks), as of 2000:

   1. Milwaukee
   2. Detroit
   3. Cleveland
   4. St. Louis
   5. Newark
   6. Cincinnati
   7. Buffalo-Niagara Falls
   8. New York
   9. Chicago
  10. Philadelphia
  11. (tie) New Orleans and Kansas City

http://www.rachelstavern.com/?p=607

[C of heartbreak]

It's pretty interesting that those are all northern cities, with the exception of New Orleans which I'm kind surprised is on the list, and maybe St. Louis which is in a former slave state.

[diesel_powered]

Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago I'd expect, but Milwaukee? As #1? Crazy.

[jebreject]

Dude, spend more time here. It's not actually that surprising at all.

[Ignatius]

St. Louis as Missouri as slave state is a little tricky - the years running up to the Civil War were especially violent and not friendly to blacks, but that has a lot to do with all that Missouri Compromise stuff and some raiders from Kansas who were strong believers in slavery.

Anyway, I'm sorry.  I like Missouri, and I will defend it, but I was certainly more aggressive than necessary in doing so.  I'm sorry that your experience there was kinda wretched, Andrew.  But don't write it off altogether just now.  And stay away from Festus next time you go. 

(My authority to make broad and strong statements defending MO? Comes from too much booze.  My bad, guys.)

[Andrew_TSKS]

Yes, St. Louis has racial divisions, like many other large cities.  But you're going a bit far in that you make it seem like St. Louis is much worse off than other large cities.  There are suburbs that are overwhelmingly white, and very close to the city itself in a way that's maybe unusual among large cities.  That's the only way I can imagine that you've gotten this impression.  St. Louis is not a post-racial paradise, but to claim that it's a great deal more segregated than any other midwestern American city is stupid.

St. Louis City solidly votes Democrat.  So does St. Louis County, and so does St. Charles County.  So does Columbia, and so does Kansas City and many of its surrounding suburbs.  These are the places where most people in Missouri live.  In the '06 Senate elections, you could argue that Missouri, despite its racist, fundamentalist Christian culture, won the Senate majority for the Democrats.  I don't know what the deal with your Against Me buddy was, but it's too bad for him.

I'm just curious about where you got the authority to make such broad and strong statements about Missouri? 

ah, but i was in jefferson county. also, i kinda feel like you're strawmanning me a little bit--i don't think i ever said st. louis was "a great deal more segregated than any other midwestern american city". either way, my only point was that my experiences made missouri seem pretty crappy to me. i may only have been there for a week, but my friend that i was visiting, who has lived there for 5 years, agreed with most of my conclusions about the place.

Anyway, I'm sorry.  I like Missouri, and I will defend it, but I was certainly more aggressive than necessary in doing so.  I'm sorry that your experience there was kinda wretched, Andrew.  But don't write it off altogether just now.  And stay away from Festus next time you go.

my friend moved from festus to st. louis county a week after i was there, so hopefully i will stay away from festus in future. i'm sure the actual cities in missouri aren't too bad--the visit i had would be like someone coming to "richmond" and actually ending up in colonial heights, a notoriously segregated far-outlying suburb.

[MollySophia]

Sooo I had the most terrifying dream--- the kind where you wake up and you're all sweaty and it takes a second to remember which reality is in fact real.

I forget the dream, but I knew the people in it were close friends of mine....

Moral of the story, I slept for two hours and now can't fall back. Hooray!

[Wally]

Gugh, I have to be at work in five hours and here I am reading about prostitution, driinking spiced chai and posting on the internet.

[kadiekatRN]

I have to drive Frank to work at 4:30 tomorrow morning,and it's 11 p.m., and I'm wide awake.

Switching back after working nights is hard.


 

[diesel_powered]

Yecch. Some melatonin, maybe?